I was pretty sure the Mamiya C330 was the camera for me when I bought it. The reviews are excellent. The lens reputation is excellent. The interchangeable lens system is the only one of its kind on a TLR apart from the Koni-Omegaflex. The bellows-focusing mechanism solves the close-focus problem that plagues every other TLR I have ever held. On paper this is the TLR you arrive at after you have outgrown all the other TLRs.
Spoiler. I sold it within weeks of the video going up on the channel. I felt nothing when I clicked through the negatives. Absolutely nothing. The pictures are sharp and the camera is excellent and I cannot for the life of me explain it any better than to say that we did not get on.
This is the review.
A short history of the Mamiya C series
Mamiya made twin lens reflexes for almost forty years. The line started with the Mamiyaflex in 1956 and ran in various forms through to 1994, when the final C330 Professional S left the factory. Across that run there were nine or ten model variants, each one a small refinement of the previous: the Mamiyaflex C, the C2, the C3, the C33, the C22, the C220, the C330, the C330f, the C220f and the C330s.
Throughout the entire series Mamiya stuck with one design choice that nobody else really copied. The C series TLRs took interchangeable lenses. You could buy the body and pick from a kit that eventually included seven focal lengths between 55mm and 250mm, all in matched pairs (one viewing lens, one taking lens) and all with leaf shutters built into the lens itself. The only other TLR in history that I am aware of with this feature is the Koni-Omegaflex, and that is a much rarer camera. In the TLR world the Mamiya C series is the closest thing to a system camera.
Mine is the C330 Pro F, released in 1972 and produced through to 1982. The Pro F sits between the original 1969 C330 and the final 1983 Pro S. The differences between the F and the S are mostly internal. The Pro S uses more plastic and is therefore lighter, with the shutter release lock moved to the side of the body and a single-action waist level finder. Otherwise they are very similar cameras. The F has a focus-locking lever on the left focus knob that the original C330 did not have.
The standard lens on the camera as I bought it is the 80mm Sekor f/2.8. This is the kit lens for the C series and is a highly regarded optic. It is widely held to be on par with the Planar of the same focal length on the Rolleiflex 2.8, which is the highest praise you can give a TLR lens of this era.
It is big
The C330 is big. Genuinely big. When I stand it on the bench next to the other TLRs in the cupboard, the Yashica 635 and the Minolta Autocord and the Yashica A all disappear behind it. The joke writes itself. The camera weighs around 1.5 kilograms with the 80mm Sekor attached and it has the heft of a tool that wants to be on a tripod.
Some of this size is the interchangeable lens system. The lens collar at the front is wider than a fixed-lens TLR needs to be, with a locking mechanism around the perimeter. The rest of it is the bellows focusing mechanism, which adds depth to the body when fully extended, and the design language of a Japanese professional camera from 1972 when bigger meant better.
What the bellows does
Here is the thing that makes the C330 genuinely different from every other TLR I have used. The lenses do not move in and out on a rigid front cell. They move in and out on a rack and pinion mechanism with a light-tight bellows joining the front standard to the body. The setup is essentially a small large-format camera with two lenses bolted to the same standard.
This matters because of close focus. On a Yashica 635 the front cell extends about a centimetre and a half forward at the closest focus setting, which limits you to a minimum focus distance of around 1.3 metres. You cannot fill the frame with a face on an 80mm. You cannot do anything that looks like macro. The bellows on the C330 extends much further, and the close focus distance comes down to something around 15 centimetres at full extension. You can fill the frame with a thistle head if you want to. You can do real macro work on a TLR for once.
The trade-off is parallax. Every TLR has parallax error between the viewing lens and the taking lens because they are not co-axial. The viewing lens sits about 50mm above the taking lens, and at infinity this difference does not matter. The closer you get to the subject, the more it matters. At the C330’s minimum focus distance it would be a serious problem.
Mamiya solved this with a clever mechanical indicator built into the viewfinder. As you wind the bellows out to focus closer, a small frame line descends from the top of the viewfinder. The line shows where the actual top of the frame is at the current focus distance. So if the line has dropped to about a third of the way down the viewfinder, the top of what you see in the viewfinder is nowhere near the top of what the film will see. You frame down from there.
It is not foolproof. You still cannot directly see what the taking lens is seeing, only an indication of where the offset is. But it is a genuinely thoughtful solution to a problem that other TLRs simply do not solve. I would take this slightly cumbersome workaround every day of the week over a camera that does not let me focus close.
There is a second thing the parallax bar tells you that I did not notice on the day. The same vertical line carries small numbers down the side of the viewfinder: 1, 1.5, 2, 2.5, 3. These are not just frame indicators. They are the bellows extension exposure compensation. As you wind the bellows further out, the light path between the lens and the film gets longer, and the effective aperture shrinks. The numbers tell you how many stops to add to your exposure to compensate. Two stops at full extension, half a stop at moderate extension. I did not know about this when I was shooting the test roll and I guessed at around one and a half stops on the thistles, which should have been closer to two. Some of the macro frames came back slightly underexposed as a consequence. That is on me.
The rest of it
Things the C330 does well that are worth mentioning. The crank handle is a single-action wind-and-cock: one turn advances the film and cocks the shutter in the same movement. The gearing is so high that loading a new roll takes about three turns of the crank to get to frame one, which makes loading feel almost suspiciously easy after the multi-turn wind-on of older TLRs. There is a multiple-exposure mode controlled by a small blue lever on the body, which lets you fire the shutter repeatedly without advancing the film. There is a film memo holder on the back of the camera for slipping the foil end of the film box into so you remember what is loaded.
Things it does not have. There is no light meter. The Pro F is purely mechanical and runs without batteries, so any metering has to come from outside the camera. Mamiya offered a metering prism finder as an accessory but I do not have one. I prefer working with a hand-held meter anyway so this is not a problem.
The shoot
I loaded a roll of FP4 Plus and drove out to a field a short way out of Bristol. The plan was farmland, animals, a bit of distance and a bit of close focus to put both ends of the bellows through their paces.
The loading was the easiest I have ever done on a 120 camera. Slot the take-up spool in the top, feed the film leader through, line the start arrows up with the red dots, close the back, three turns of the crank and you are on frame one. The whole operation took about thirty seconds.
The first frame was a hay barn in the middle distance with a slightly tilted horizon. Not because I had set it tilted deliberately, but because the clouds were tilted and I had used them to level the camera. The square frame of 6x6 is awkward for landscape compositions that want to be horizontal, and I am still working out how to use it well. I think the frame came back good.
Then a horse looked at me as if I had three heads, and I took a portrait of it through the viewing lens with the camera held at chest height. The viewfinder of the C330 is genuinely bright. You can see the focus snap in and out clearly even in moderately overcast light. The eye-level magnifier in the waist level finder helps for critical focus.
I walked into the next field and was followed by a herd of cows, which is more of a Bristol experience than I had expected of an afternoon shoot. The cows were curious and friendly and put their noses on my shoulder while I tried to compose. I shot a frame of one of them from about a metre away with the bellows partly extended. The parallax bar was useful for that one.
The sheep in the field after were less interested in being photographed. They turned away on the count of three on the one frame I tried to make. There is an art to photographing sheep and I do not have it.
I changed rolls in the field for the second roll. This is normally a fiddly job on a TLR but the C330 made it almost embarrassingly easy. Pop the back open, drop the spent roll into the bottom, pull the take-up spool out of the bottom and put it in the top, feed a fresh roll into the bottom, three turns of the crank. Frame one. The whole thing took less than a minute including untangling the backing paper.
The macro frames went on a clump of thistles in the corner of the field. I extended the bellows almost fully and used the parallax bar to recompose from where the viewfinder thought the frame was to where the frame actually was. Without the compensation indicator I would have got the heads of the thistles cut off the top of the frame. With it I got them centred. The frames are sharp and clean. They could have been a stop brighter if I had read the bellows extension scale before the shoot rather than after.
The negatives
The negatives are good. Excellent, in fact. The 80mm Sekor is sharp from edge to edge at the apertures I was working with, and the tonal range of FP4 has come through cleanly. The macro frames are quietly satisfying as technical exercises. The cow portraits are well exposed and the horse came out well composed. The hay barn fills the frame nicely in the middle distance.
And I felt nothing when I looked at them.
The verdict that is hardest to write
This is the bit I am genuinely struggling with as I write this article. Objectively the Mamiya C330 Pro F is an excellent camera. The build, the lens, the viewfinder and the mechanics are all first-rate. The macro capability is unique among TLRs and the negatives come back sharp and clean. I have been looking for a TLR that solves the close-focus problem for ages and the C330 solves it.
I do not like it.
The honest version of the verdict is something like this. The C330 is a well-behaved camera. It does everything it is asked to do, exactly the way you would expect it to, with no fuss and no character. It is twenty years younger than most of the other TLRs in the cupboard and you can feel the twenty years of design refinement when you handle it. Every edge has been planed down. Every awkwardness has been engineered out. The result is technically excellent and emotionally inert.
I find I want my cameras to push back at me a bit. I want the awkward focus throw on the Yashica 635, the unpredictable shutter timing on a 1920s folder, the bulb mode count on a Bessa, the weight and the noise of a Bronica. Cameras with character force me to think about what I am doing in a way that a camera which does everything for me does not. The C330 makes the photograph too easy. By the time I have pressed the shutter I have not really thought about what I was photographing. The negative comes back exactly as I had hoped it would, and I look at it, and I feel nothing.
This is not a recommendation against the camera. If you want a TLR that handles close focus properly and takes interchangeable lenses, the C330 is the right camera. The negatives are sharp and clean and the build is genuinely first-rate. It might be the right camera for you for the same reasons it is the wrong camera for me. The kit lens is genuinely as good as the Planar on a Rolleiflex 2.8 and the macro work is something no other TLR can do without close-up filters. The handling, once you get used to the size, is remarkably smooth.
It is just not the camera I want to take out on a Saturday.
What I am taking from it
A few things from this review that will stay with me.
I am going to sell the C330. The decision is not really in question. It will go to someone who will get more out of it than I have.
I will keep looking for a TLR that handles close focus. The C330 has demonstrated that this is possible and a capable TLR can do macro work. Other manufacturers have not solved it as elegantly as Mamiya, but there are workarounds with close-up filters and other accessories that I had previously dismissed. I will go back to those with a more open mind.
I will pay more attention to bellows extension compensation in the future. Not just on the C330, which is now leaving the cupboard, but on the large format work as well. The C330 has made me notice a thing I had not been thinking about properly.
And I will read the manual before the shoot next time, not after.
One last thing
The orange lens caps you can see in the video are from Simon Forster, who makes 3D-printed lens caps for old cameras and sells them through Forster UK (he has since rebranded from Forster Photographic). I bought a set on eBay when I got the camera. They fit the C330 lens collar perfectly and have not loosened in handling. The colour is hideous in the best possible way. You cannot lose them in a camera bag because they glow in the dark like a navigation beacon.
Simon also runs the Large Format Photography Podcast and the Classic Lenses Podcast, both of which are worth your time if you are interested in the slower end of analogue. He is one of the people in the UK community who deserves a much wider audience than he has, and his print sales and 3D printed accessories are how he funds the podcasts. Worth a look.
The next outing was the Voigtländer Bessa I, which is a genuinely different sort of camera and which I have kept.